


Stardust in Your Skin

by midwestwind



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Romance, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 18:43:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4533069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midwestwind/pseuds/midwestwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma Swan may believe in magic and curses and fairy tales but she absolutely <i>does not</i> believe in soulmates.</p>
<p>(a soulmate!au that's honestly barely an au.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stardust in Your Skin

**Author's Note:**

> oh, man, am i really writing for /another/ new fandom? you bet your aunt fanny! okay, so, first work for this fandom/relationship and whoo let me tell you it has not been an easy road. i started this puppy back in june. it is now august. needless to say, i did not work on this consistently but my heart was there.
> 
> insane thanks to sandy (loganmars) for being my proofreader/beta/friend/cheerleader and overall just putting up with me while i wrote this and got incredibly self-conscious about it in the process.
> 
> i don't want to start this off with a super long notes because i know this will probably get skipped anyway so, last thing real quick, just in case you want some recommended listening while you read this, here are some things i listened to while writing; [christina perri's head or heart album](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrNQGFYF1Ak&list=PLLpHUxGA-WgbvL3KvVf6fqlJvXT9fQU4L) (do yourself a favor and listen to sea of lovers regardless. you will not regret it.), [onerepublic's native album](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fPXkX5Y7TI&list=PLRZWdh6OfQ4ZJvu_W6KEaN6-BYLBHyrY2), pretty much any of [sandy's cs playlists](http://8tracks.com/loganecholls).
> 
> happy reading!

Emma Swan does not believe in magic.

Wait, scratch that.

Once you've stumbled into a magical town and actually broken a curse it's hard to consider yourself a skeptic, per say. So, let's try this again.

Emma Swan may believe in magic and curses and fairy tales but she absolutely  _ does not  _ believe in soulmates.

She can't be sure when exactly the mark appeared on her skin. There's a part of her that's sure, now that she believes in magic and all the insanity that follows it, that it showed up sometime after she crossed the town line. She hadn't noticed it right away, too high on her torso to notice when she's pulling on her pants unless she's staring herself right in the mirror, but she knows every scar, freckle, and tattoo on her body and she knows it shouldn't be there. She'd done all the usual things one does upon finding something concerning on their skin - scrubbed it, scratched it, accepted it - before the world turned upside down and there were bigger matters than the stars painted over her skin.

She doesn't think about it much until she and Mary Margaret find themselves trapped in the Enchanted Forest of all things. Emma's still trying to come to grips with the fact that this is her life now and the women next to her - no older than herself - is actually her mother. As well as a previously fictional fairy tale character.

Somehow, she's having less trouble believing the latter.

Mary Margaret pulls her shoe off one night as they're sitting by the firelight, complaining about the way kicked up dirt finds every nook and cranny to set into, and Emma spots it. The thin line of stars travels along the curve of her foot, disappears into her pant leg. Mary Margaret spots her gaze and the annoyance from the dirt quickly turns to a serene smile as she traces the stars with her index finger.

"Your father has one just like it," she explains and Emma has to force her gaze away from the constellation on the other woman's foot even as her chest tightens at the word father. Until a few days ago Emma didn't have a father or a mother. She only had Henry and even that had been tenuous as he'd laid in a coma and she'd been presumably powerless to save him.

Mary Margaret's voice pulls her out of her own dark thoughts. "They're called soul stars."

Emma barely conceals her snort at the term, knowing she's in for some tale of magic she would have rolled her eyes at a week ago.

"They say most of us are born with them and the only person with an exact match is our soulmate," Mary Margaret continues, either oblivious to Emma's skepticism or ignoring it. Emma would bet on the latter. The other woman's voice has taken on a dreamy quality and Emma stabs at the fire with a stick, thinking of the mark just over her rib cage.

"It went away during the curse," Mary Margaret says suddenly, after a contemplative silence. "I didn't realize it of course but, now that I think about it, I didn't have it while I was cursed."

"That must be because it's a magical part of you," Emma comments and she doesn't mean for it to sound so bitter - doesn't even know why it sounds so bitter - but it does and Mary Margaret is giving her  _ that look _ so she forces the subject to change. They have more important things to worry about than soulmates.

It's a while later, while she's on watch and the other women rest, that she realizes. She's twisted in the firelight, contorting her body into an uncomfortable position to be able to see the constellation on her skin. She traces it with her finger, pressing down lightly at each star point, and staring at the unfamiliar sky above her when it hits her.

"Gemini," she murmurs, so quietly the vowels get lost on her tongue. She summons all of her, albeit limited, knowledge of the constellation and the twins that make it up.

Castor and Pollux, she remembers, the patrons of sailors.

“Have you ever even been in love?” He's smirking at her and he sounds so smug with his  _ open book  _ bullshit she should kick him right off the God forsaken beanstalk. Except, despite his initial lies, the fear of death has seemed to scared the truth out of him enough that she hasn't detected a lie since they started. And she hates to admit it but it's a long way back to the bottom and she might need him.

So she thinks about Neal and Graham and the constellation that feels more like a burden permanently etched into her skin than it does a gift in the way Mary Margaret had made it sound. And she thinks about Henry and the focus she needs to keep on getting back to her son, not playing some sick game of twenty questions with a vengeful and  _ irritating  _ pirate from a children's story.

So she lies.

When she leaves him at the top of the beanstalk, shouting her name in varying tones of pleading and angry, she forces herself not to look back, not to falter. She thinks of Henry and the stories of the Captain Hook she knows as opposed to the one she’s walking away from. There’s too much risk in him, all thinly veiled rage under a thick coating of sarcasm and innuendo, and she can’t take the chance he’ll stall her from getting back to her son. There’s too much uncertainty in his alliance with Cora and just what exactly the woman wants in the first place.

It’s not like she’s leaving him to die but something about it eats at her the same.

They’ve been home for less than a day when Henry raises his shirt to show her his like a badge of honor. It’s only a few inches higher and more to the side on his rib cage than hers but it’s so nearly exactly where hers is she actually tears up at the similarity.

“Soul stars,” he boasts and she can only nod in response.

Henry babbles on about the mark and if she’d thought the way Mary Margaret had said the words was borderline ridiculous there’s something wonderful about the way Henry says it. Mary Margaret had said the words with the gentleness and calm of someone who’d already found their soulmate, their happy ending. Henry says it with excitement and wonder, the pure innocence of someone who still believes in love.

Emma hadn’t thought she’d believed in love anymore either but, as she watches Henry’s face light up as he recounts word for word the things David told him about his stars, she considers how real some love is. He lets his t-shirt fall back down over his frame and she gently rests her hand over where she knows the mark is.

“Leo,” she tells him. “It looks like the constellation Leo.” She can see the surprise on his face and knows he hadn’t noticed this fact before.

“The lion,” he grins and she nods. She wonders if it’s odd for them both to have the constellations of this realm on their skin. She doesn’t know how she really feels about Henry having it at all, especially now that she’s trying to accept the magic that runs through her own veins. Mary Margaret and David’s stars aren’t from any sky she’s ever seen but maybe they’re not meant to be constellations in the first place, maybe she’s just seeing what she wants to see.

But Henry’s practically glowing with excitement and it isn’t hard for her to muster up a real smile for him as she moves her hand from his torso to ruffle his hair. She wonders for how long she can get away with these little gestures before he starts batting her hands away and telling her he’s  _ practically an adult, God!  _ She hopes for years of these moments in their future.

“You know what the lion means, don’t you?” She asks and he shakes his head, mussed hair flying with the vigorous movement. “Bravery.”

If he was glowing before, now he’s a supernova.

If she'd thought things would calm down in Storybrooke once they were back, she'd be an idiot. One thing Emma Swan is not. It's bad enough Regina is in hiding over a crime everyone knows now she didn't commit but then comes Greg, and Cora, and  _ Hook _ . She's sitting next to his prone form – more bruises and blood than clear skin at this point – and a spiteful part of her, a part she's still learning to get better at ignoring, wonders why she's bothering to protect him after everything.

He gasps at the pain she's sure his cracked ribs are causing as he wakes before he spots her – and then the cuffs keeping him chained to the bed.

“You look good, I must say, all ' _ where's Cora _ ' in a commanding voice. Chills.” Even bedridden, the guy makes himself a hard person to feel sorry for. When she threatens him, he smiles. She doesn't even have to touch him, he flinches away from her hard enough to prove her point. This time, she's the one who smirks.

“If I were to pick dead guy of the year,” she tells him, “I'd pick you.”

She's not sure why her chest aches at his smirk but she leaves the room before she can find out. She'll deal with the immediate problem of Greg Mendell and find Cora without his help. If he's so proud of what he's done, he can deal with Gold on his own.

The decision doesn't stop her from agreeing to leave with Gold.

Finding Neal is bad. Hook poisoning Gold is worse. Then there's the fiancee. All in all, Emma can't decide which is the biggest surprise of the day – that's a lie, Hook wasn't that much of a surprise in hindsight – but she's definitely had her fill of them for the day. Emma shouldn't expect her luck to get any better really, on a stolen pirate ship with Gold slowly dying below deck. So she doesn't.

And, in true form, it doesn't.

“Why are you really here?” She asks Hook after  _ Neal's dead.  _ After  _ Henry's gone _ . After  _ maybe I just needed reminding that I could _ . After mermaids and freak storms and near drownings. She'd barely had time to swallow one tragedy before the next tried to swallow her in return.

“You needed a ship and a tour guide,” he offers with a raised eyebrow and a see through smirk. She doesn't return it like she knows he's looking for. Freezing on the deck of his ship with only a moment before her parents will make the rounds to fuss over her once more, she doesn't have the energy to play his games.

“Hook,” she tries again, softer than she means to but the smirk slips from his face so she doesn't correct her tone. “ _ Why _ ?”

“Perhaps I just wanted to assist you, Swan.” He matches her tone, blue eyes too bright in the Neverland darkness as they search her face and Emma suddenly wishes she hadn't asked. The trip is personal for everyone else on the boat because of Henry, she doesn't want to admit it might be personal for Hook because of her.

David spots the shore and calls out. Hook gets to walk away before Emma can force her frozen feet to move.

Pan's puzzle wasn't something she was prepared for. Her inability to solve it just adds to the useless feeling she's had since she stepped onto the damn island. The last thing she'd been expecting was for a piece of paper to open her up and peer inside before it turned her upside down. She hasn't really thought of herself as just an orphan in a while, not consciously anyway. Pan found a way to remind her that it's always been there regardless.

She hates that she'd managed to give him exactly what he wanted.

“So, just how did you unlock the map?” Hook asks as she swallows down the rum. It burns the back of her throat and, she'll never admit this to him, it's the best thing she's felt since they reached the shore.

“I did what Pan asked.” She knows he'll ask, can't make herself walk away to stop him.

“And just who are you, Swan?” She can feel his eyes on her before she glances at him out of the corner of her own. He's searching again, looking for something she can't give him anyway. Part of her wishes he'd give up, part of her likes that he hasn't yet.

“Wouldn't you like to know?” She tries for teasing, even throws in a genuine smirk because this is how they do this, isn't it? All the way back to  _ I was hoping it'd be you _ . She still stays, waits for the return as she hands the bottle back to him.

“Perhaps I would.” It's the fact that she can't find a lie that makes her walk away.

“Please,” Emma scoffs, “you couldn't handle it.” She's absolutely not going to kiss him as  _ thanks  _ of all things. She has no intention of kissing him at all, regardless of the weird pull she feels towards him. There's too much going on, too much pain still sitting in her chest, for her to let in anyone but especially  _ him _ .

“Perhaps you're the one who couldn't handle it,” he counters and the challenge is so blatant, the subtle raise of his eyebrow as he moves in too close. She should leave, walk away back to her family and keep her focus solely on getting to Henry. But Emma's learning she's bad at walking away from Hook. She's even worse at refusing a challenge and before she can think herself out of it her fingers are curling in his collar and tugging him to her. He reacts easily, not surprised that he got what he wanted, but there's no control in it.

Emma's fingers move to his hair of their own volition and she feels Hook's curl in hers, move down her back. She doesn't mean for it to last so long, doesn't mean to go back for more, doesn't mean to  _ mean it  _ when she kisses him. But she's still in his space once they separate and she's having trouble pulling herself from him, her fingers still tight in the leather of his coat. She can feel his eyes on her before she's caught her breath or composure enough to meet his gaze.

“That was, uh.” He all but breathes the words against her lips and the pull of them, the want to push back in for more, scares her more than any way that Killian Jones has ever looked at her.

“A one time thing,” she tells him, and maybe herself, as she forces herself back from him. He tracks her movement and she has to look away from him because he got what he wanted but he looks worse for it. She forces the way he'd managed amazed and pained all at the same time from her mind and tells him not to follow her.

“As you wish,” he replies and she imagines him bowing or something equally pretentious but it doesn't stop the smile on her face as she ducks around the corner.

Emma still thinks about Boston sometimes, when things get particularly crazy. She doesn't regret her decision to stay in Storybrooke, can't bring herself to regret a minute of her time with Henry. But she thinks of Boston and her comparably safe job chasing down bail jumpers and scumbags alike, her quiet little nondescript apartment, the relative simpleness of her life. In hindsight, at least, but when Mary Margaret tells her Neal is still alive even the calming thought of Boston can't stop the upside down effect the news has on her world.

She'd hardly been ready to just forget Neal but she was ready to heal, at least, or try to or whatever was healthy in these situations. She finds it hard to believe there's a self-help type book for her situation. No pamphlet or instructional index card on how to feel when the man who'd abandoned you to jail, who also happens to be the father of your child, shows back up and then almost immediately dies suddenly. Even less so does she expect any help on dealing with his sudden return to the world of the living.

The Echo Cave is just more of Pan's games.

“I kissed Emma.” Emma is surprised when Hook opts to go first in the secret sharing department, it turns more to annoyance when those are the words that come out of him. David gives a shout but Mary Margaret shuts him down. Emma had already told Mary Margaret so it isn't really a secret. She tells Hook as much.

“It was just a kiss,” she tells him, even as it feels somehow untrue. “How's that your darkest secret?”

“It's what the kiss exposed,” he begins to explain and Emma can already tell she doesn't want to know this secret, it'd be safer for both of them if he kept it to himself. She doesn't want to be a part of his darkest secret, doesn't want them to be that kind of connected.

“That is, until I met you.”

Yeah, Emma definitely didn't want to know.

More than that, she didn't want to tell Neal that she'd been hoping he was dead. But, alive or not, Neal Cassidy feels like a love better left in her past. She doesn't know how to do that just yet, though.

Sometime after they'd crossed the town line in their pilfered pirate ship – which, she thinks, is probably an oxymoron – she'd spotted Neal's stars. He'd always had a line of freckles leading up from his chest to just above his collar bone. Unconnected dots that Emma would kiss and trace with her fingertips as the two of them laid in whatever spot they found safe enough for the night.

Storybrooke turned them to stars that didn't match Emma's and she hadn't really expected his to match hers, still doesn't really believe in the whole thing anyway, but there it was. Further proof that she was not meant for a man she couldn't stop herself from loving.

She'd never mentioned them and he'd never asked but his are the first she's seen not to be typically covered by clothes or shoes and in Neverland there's a sort of glow to them that makes her stomach tighten each time the collar of his button up pulls and she spots the first two stars in a row.

Emma ignores the sudden want to cover her rib cage, as if her own mark might glow through the fabric of her shirt. She's been too busy to think about the marks on her skin but with Neal back and his visible marks in her face as they trek through Neverland's forest, it's hard to forget them. Her own shirt does nothing to cover the spot where the stars would be if they matched Neal's and it's not until they're packing up to head their separate ways that someone finally mentions it.

“They're not the end-all be-all, you know?” Mary Margaret says, as if they'd been talking about it the whole time and Emma raises an eyebrow in question. “The soul stars.” Emma sighs because they'd just had this conversation, finding Henry is all she wants to worry about right now.

“Mary Margaret,” she sighs and the other woman shrugs.

“I'm just saying, it's like true love. Not all love is true but that doesn't make it any less real.”

“ _ You're  _ pushing me towards someone who isn't my soulmate?” Emma asks and, hell, she's been practicing magic with Regina but the words still seem ridiculous. “The Queen of True Love?” Mary Margaret's face falls and Emma realizes she's struck a cord. She hadn't meant to but Mary Margaret is hurting and the last thing Emma wants to do is make it worse. To her credit, Mary Margaret covers quickly.

“I'm  _ urging  _ you towards someone who I think could make you happy.” Emma decides not to tell her how easily Neal could break her as well.

She ignores the tension between Neal and Hook until she can't anymore and questions Hook. It unnerves her that he can so easily step into her space and it doesn't feel like an intrusion. It unnerves her that he's not unnerving in the way she's come to look at most people.

A pirate, of all things.

He bows his head when she says the word, like it's a slur rather than his chosen profession and she doesn't know what to make of it.

“So, when I win your heart, Emma, and I will win it,” he promises and she can't pull herself from his gaze, “it will not be because of any trickery. It will be because you want me.”

“This is not a contest, Hook,” she says instead of debating it because she's having a hard time believing in her own resolve the longer she's around him. He grins and reminds her she'll have to chose eventually. She doesn't tell him she's already made her decision about Neal. Emma reminds him that the only thing she currently cares about is getting her son back.

“And you will,” he says like it's a fact rather than a desperate hope.

“You think so?” Emma asks because she likes that he's sure and she  _ wants  _ to be that sure. She wants the reassurance that they won't all die on this fucking island from someone who thinks like her without the blind hope of someone who's already found their happy. Hook might be the best one equipped to give that to her.

“I've yet to see you fail.” And for all his grand declarations and romantic promises, it may be the best thing he's said to her.

When things come to a head with Pan she doesn't expect winning to mean losing everyone she loves except for  Henry. Emma doesn't know how to lose her parents when she'd only just accepted them as such, doesn't know how to close back up the scars this town had torn open and tried to repair with the truth. She knows she has to be strong for Henry, though, because he's losing a parent he'd just found as well.

So, she sucks in a breath and circles the crowd back to her car and prepares herself for the loss as best she can.

Then Hook ambles up to her and she ramps herself up for some long-winded heartfelt goodbye as he comments on her bright yellow Bug.

“There's not a day will go by I won't think you of you,” he says instead and, for a moment, she thinks about returning the sentiment and admitting to how much he's gotten under her skin. What can it really hurt now? But, she reminds herself, false hope is worse than no hope. She won't return Hook's affections just to let him leave, send them both off with what ifs and could have beens.

So she settles for, “Good.”

He smirks like he knows anyway and she can't help herself from returning it.

When Regina tells her that she and Henry will forget everything about them and Storybrooke anyway, Emma decides she'd made the right decision.

When she crosses the town line, Emma Swan is a bail bondsperson with a son that she never gave up for adoption and an odd group of freckles over her ribs that have been there as long as she can remember.

Moving to New York just feels natural. It’s hard to call an apartment fire “well-timed” but, oddly, that's the best way Emma can think to describe it. She and Henry had decided it was  _ time for a change _ . While New York wasn't that much different from Boston, Emma couldn't really see them settling into a nice suburban house with the lawn and picket fence. So, it was New York and a nice apartment and a return to catching sleazy men who'd rather skip out on bail then let the courts decide their fates.

Henry makes friends so easily any concerns about the new school she has when she drops him off on the first day are gone by the time he gets in the car that afternoon. He hasn't even closed the door yet before he's bubbling with stories about ten new people and how much she'd like his history teacher but not his English teacher. She can only grin, ruffle his hair, and offer him ice cream before they head home to start his homework. He takes to the change the way Henry takes to everything – enthusiastically and with great optimism. Emma will never know what she did to deserve him.

“Hey, kid,” she calls across the kitchen one night as Henry works on his science homework, furrowed brow and fidgeting telling her just how stressed out it's making him. He doesn't look up but hums to let her know he's listening. “You're happy, right? With the whole move and new school and everything?”

It's been a little over two weeks since they'd officially settled into the apartment and Emma still gets sudden waves of anxiety that she and Henry aren't  _ supposed  _ to be here. But she doesn't know where else they're supposed to be. Maybe something in her subconscious is trying to tell her he was happier in Boston.

Henry looks up from his homework with a confused frown. Emma turns the heat down on the stove so she can cross the room to sit across from him.

“Are  _ you  _ happy?” He asks and Emma knows she really shouldn't let him turn the tables on her like this. But she likes to think they reward each other's honesty with more honesty so she doesn't lie to Henry. She thinks about her job (that really doesn't change no matter what city she's in) and the few people she's gotten to know (mostly because of Henry's school) and shrugs.

“Yeah, I am,” she admits because really the rest doesn't matter anyway. All she's ever needed was Henry. He meets her shrug with his own.

“Then so I am,” he assures her and then breaks into a grin, “but I'll be less so if you burn dinner.”

Emma rolls her eyes and musses his hair as she crosses by him back to the food.

She meets Walsh four months after they move in. The apartment is still mostly bare, but it's getting there. It's just that between Henry and his school and her own job she doesn't have a lot of time for furniture shopping. It's completely by chance that she finds the end table and, Emma doesn't believe in fate but, Walsh is nice. When he calls her to tell her that the order is in two weeks early and asks her out when she shows up to pick it up, it doesn't seem like it could hurt to say yes.

It helps that he turns out to be practically perfect in a way that isn't boring. He understands her job means weird hours and canceled dinners. He helps Henry with the homework that Emma is just useless at and Henry thinks he's just as great as Emma does. It's hard, sometimes, not to compare every guy she ever goes out with to Neal. He's still her most recent serious relationship but he's hardly set the bar very high. Walsh doesn't remind her of Neal at all and that might be one of her favorite things about him. He doesn't rush her and she doesn't sit around waiting for the other shoe to drop.

For eight months, her life is kind of perfect.

And then the crazy guy who looks like he just came from costume theater in Central Park shows up and everything goes to hell.

He's rambling about her  _ family  _ and  _ remembering  _ before he just kisses her like that is acceptable behavior. She moves on instinct, her knee connecting with his groin just enough to send him reeling backwards into the hallway outside her apartment. He's still shouting about needing her to remember something when she closes the door on him.

Emma lies to Henry for the first time she can remember when he asks who it was, but he doesn't need to know about the crazy person outside their apartment.

She doesn't know how to deal with the fact that something about him  _ had  _ felt vaguely familiar.

When he shows up at dinner, she thinks she should probably just tell someone about him then but he's gone as quickly as he shows up and Walsh proposing, admittedly, makes her forget about him for a while. When she goes to the apartment next day, she hates to admit it but he's right. He'd shown up and suddenly everything feels off kilter. When she realizes the apartment belongs to Neal, her curiosity turns to anger and, more so, fear for her son. This time, she doesn't hesitate as she dials 911 on her way to Central Park.

When Hook helps her get her memories back she knows he wants it to be a blessing. It feels more like a curse.

“Hook,” she breathes and the grin that spreads across his face is familiar and hopeful but Emma feels more lost than she did before the potion.

“Did you miss me?” He asks and, at the very least, he feels familiar. She wishes he didn't feel almost like an anchor between the two lives in her head. She thinks it'll go away once she gets back to Storybrooke.

“I need a drink,” she says in lieu of an answer. Hook doesn't disagree.

Emma should have known perfect guys don't exist but she hadn't really expected Walsh to sprout wings and try to murder her. She doesn't know if finding out he hadn't been real either is better or worse than leaving him behind. There'll certainly be less questions, at least.

“Swan?” Hook calls out as he reaches the roof and she wishes that the familiarity of it didn't feel like a comfort. “What in blazes was that?”

“A reminder,” she sighs, “that I was never safe. What I wanted, what I thought I could have, was not in the card for the savior.” Hook looks like her words hurt him and she's not sure if he's hurting for her or for himself. Emma doesn't want to consider the implications of either option.

“We leave in the morning,” she tells him before heading back into the building.

Emma thinks of that old saying,  _ “Take the girl out of Storybrooke, can't take Storybrooke out of the girl.” _ She'd been naive to think she could leave it behind even before Regina wiped her memories. When she can't sleep, she packs bags for herself and Henry but leaves more than half of their things in the apartment mostly out of spite. She's going to believe she has the ability to return to this life, real or not.

Driving back into Storybrooke feels like a dream. She remembers the dreams she'd had after they first moved to New York. A vague small town and blurry figures she  _ felt  _ like she should know. Emma will admit she's a little terrified her parents won't remember her, doesn't know how to jog their memories. She's spent the entire car ride from New York trying not to think about the way Hook had thought would bring her memories back. Emma wouldn't admit it but after he'd left the night before she'd lifted her sweater in the bathroom and traced her fingers over the constellation the return of her memories had apparently brought back.

She doesn't feel like she's home until David says her name, assures her he remembers her.

She's not sure what's more surprising, that everyone in Storybrooke has apparently lost a whole year or that Mary Margaret is more than a little pregnant. She's gonna have to get used to Storybrooke's surprises again.

Flying monkeys. Wicked Witch of the West. She is  _ so _ not in New York anymore.

Really, nothing should surprise her anymore and yet. Between Regina’s extra doses of bitter and Hook’s, well,  _ everything _ she’s reeling from her return to Storybrooke before she really has time to settle in. Not to mention Emma is trying not to worry about Neal but she can’t help it, if not for herself for Henry. Eventually he’s going to remember, no matter how she feels about it, and she doesn’t want to tell him they’ve lost his dad  _ again  _ when he does.

They find hollyberries in Regina’s office. Emma takes Hook with her to the woods as she sends David off to meet with the midwife.

Hook shakes the bush with his namesake when they spot it and Emma can’t help but tease him ( _ you’ll find any excuse to use that thing _ ) mostly because, now that she remembers it, she almost misses it. He complains about her tendency to drag him into danger but when he lies about the missing year that only he remembers, she can’t let it go.

Emma still doesn’t know how to categorize Walsh in her mind. She’d spent eight months falling in love with him and he’d been a pawn in someone else’s game. Emma understands to an extent that Hook can’t see that, wasn’t there for those eight months but only the one night that seemed to matter most. It doesn’t stop it from hurting when he insinuates that any relationship between her and Walsh would have been loveless.

“Were you considering it?” He asks before elaborating, “his proposal.” His body languages changes. Emma can tell that these are dangerous waters he’s wading them into. Except Hook doesn’t strike her as someone who wades carefully into the surf but someone who dives headfirst into the undertow and prays for the best.

“Does it matter?” Emma deflects. She doesn’t want it to matter to him but she wishes even more that it didn’t matter to herself. That if Hook’s timing hadn’t been so spot on, she’d have been walking around with a shiny new ring on her finger.

“Humor me,” Hook bites and it’s too demanding because she doesn’t  _ owe  _ him this but that doesn’t stop the words from coming out before she can help it.

“Yes, okay?” She snaps. “I was in love so of course I was considering it. As usual, he wasn’t who he said he was and I got my heart broken. That enough humor for you?”

He at least seems properly chagrined for all of a half second.

“Don’t take this the wrong way but I’m glad to hear that.” Emma wonders if there’s a right way to take that.

“You’re glad to hear I had my heart broken?”

“If it can be broken,” he says, stepping into her space in a way that’s all too reminiscent of Neverland and  _  when I win your heart, Emma _ , “it means it still works.” She doesn’t know how to respond to his assessment or his gaze for what feels like too long to be allowing him to stare at her like that and for her to be staring right back. When no words come, she pulls herself away from him and walks on.

He’s wrong about one thing, at least, he doesn’t need her help courting danger.

If Emma needed a better reason to ignore whatever pull Hook has on her, fix this curse, pack Henry up in her car and drive as fast and as far from Storybrooke as possible, Neal would be it.

There has to be something poetic about how she finds Neal only to lose him just as quickly every time. He may not have been her forever, but that had never made her love him any less. Emma holds Henry tightly as they bury the father he can’t remember loving and promises herself they’ll leave the moment they can.

Killian offering to spend time with Henry and tell him about Neal means more than she’s willing to examine at the time. But the offer is too good to pass up when she’s utterly helpless to make her own kid feel better. Henry doesn’t come back looking one hundred percent but he looks better at the least, even asking to go out sailing with Killian again.

“You can’t just take him back to New York when this is over and pretend like none of this is real,” he insists once Henry’s disappeared inside and she’s given him the cliffsnotes version of Regina’s confrontation with the Wicked Witch.

Like hell she can’t.

“Thanks again,” she dismisses him, heading back inside the little hotel room and hoping Hook can take the hint. She’ll do what’s best for Henry and it isn’t his place to disapprove of it.

Emma asks him to look after Henry again because, oddly enough, Henry likes spending time with Killian. She figures it’s probably because he still acts like he’s about fourteen sometimes which makes him cool to her twelve-year-old. Plus, Emmae doesn’t want her parents to freak him out again and Regina will be with her.  When she tells Henry she needs him to hang out with a friend of hers today - and, really, she’s thinking Granny or maybe Leroy - a grin spreads across his face as he asks, “Killian?”

She doesn’t want to tell him no and she finds herself being led towards the docks. She’s trying to remember if Henry had liked Killian this much before but it feels like a stretch.

Emma wishes Killian wasn’t so openly enthusiastic about her magic. Neal had hated magic and she had been worried that him finding out she was learning to use hers would push him away. Killian has had the opposite effect. Emma wishes she could find a better term than  _ amazed  _ to describe his response to her for many reason but anything else feels like the wrong word. She doesn’t want to amaze him, she just wants to save her family and go home.

“You can’t just pretend like this never happened. Trust me, I spent the last year trying to do just that. Return to the person that I used to be and it didn’t work,” he warns her but there it is again, whatever secret he’s so ashamed of or afraid of that he won’t tell her.

Killian’s always had a tendency to be open to a fault with her, once she’d called him on his initial bullshit the first time they’d met, and she can’t imagine what would be so bad he’d close up. Emma doesn’t want to consider she’s afraid to know.

“Why? What happened over the last year that you’re not telling me?”

“It matters not,” he deflects, insisting once more that she can’t return to her life in New York. He wants her to trust him with a truth he won’t share and Emma doesn’t want to admit she’s tempted to do just that.

She should have known better than to tell Regina she’d left Henry with Hook. Emma wants to believe he’d have done the same things he’d done to get her back to Storybrooke if it had been anyone else who could save them. Regina, of course, doesn’t see it the same way.

“Seriously?” Regina asks with a little more scorn that Emma thinks the conversation warrants. “You’re going to pretend everyone doesn’t seen the yearning looks and doey-eyes?”

“I don’t  _ yearn _ ,” Emma counters on instinct. It isn’t until Regina turns back with a smirk that Emma realizes she’d just assumed they were talking about her own feelings for Killian - whatever they may be.

“Well maybe,” Regina shrugs, lowering her voice conspiratorially, “but he does.”

And then Regina hands her an oversized book with foreign symbols lining the pages and she’s too concerned about that and actually learning to use her magic to worry about how Hook  _ looks  _ at her.

She’s not sure exactly what changes her mind. Maybe it’s seeing Ariel with her prince, knowing that people out there are still finding happy endings despite everything the world puts out between them. She wants to believe she can still find that happiness she had over the last year again, desperately clings to the possibility of finding it again in New York. Trying to rectify her past with the present is exhausting her, she wants to move forward.

Emma can’t deny she expects Killian to jump at the chance to join them for dinner, especially after helping Ariel the way he had. When he can’t get out of the apartment fast enough, she still wants to know what he’s keeping from her but realizes that, if she’s going to give herself a pass on her own past, maybe he deserves one as well.

“And, Killian,” she stops him in the hallway before he turns down the stairwell and she leans against the door frame, “whatever happened this past year, whatever you’re not telling me, I don’t care. I’m tired of living in the past.”

She was hoping it’d be a comfort to him, that she could let it go, but he looks just as burdened as ever. Even more so, somehow, since she’d seen him that morning.

“I know how you feel,” he says before continuing down the stairwell.

Despite her attempts, Killian only seems to get worse from there. When they meet at Regina’s he acts as though touching her is a punishable offense and she doesn’t know how to fix what she can’t remember breaking. It’s a miracle Emma manages to convince him to go to Granny’s with her for a drink and light research. He deflects and digs for excuses and she’s beginning to think it’s  _ her _ , that something she did changed things and now he doesn’t want to be around her. Something on her face must convince him.

Granny brews her a hot chocolate in between stacking chairs and disappearing into the kitchen and Killian hangs back at a booth away from the bar where she sits. Emma remembers how enthusiastically he’d reacted to her magic training and decides to use that to her advantage.

It takes a few tries and a lot more concentration than she’d like but when she feels the change and opens her eyes for the third time, the mug of hot chocolate is gone. She slaps the counter with a shout and spins on the stool to find it resting on top of the book open in front of Killian. He still looks far too surly for her good mood though and she twists her hand in the air, his hook vanishing from his brace to hang from one of the light fixtures. It works quicker and easier than the mug had and she thinks it might be her good mood. She laughs in delight, the magic bubbling inside of her, but Killian snaps at her.  _ Bad form _ .

Before she can get to the bottom of it, Belle bursts in with the answer to Zelena’s spell and they have bigger problems at the moment.

Everyone decides the best way to break the curse is to get Henry to believe and Emma doesn’t  _ disagree _ , of course, but that doesn’t mean she loves the thought of forcing him back into all the pain of the past few years either. She leaves Henry at Granny’s while they try to track down the book and hates that she yells at him for the first time she can remember. She knows that her secrets and lies haven’t been entirely fair to him and it’s not a surprise that he questions her.

The whole ordeal just seals the thought of returning to New York in her mind. In New York, Emma never lied by anything but omission to keep him away from the gritty details of her cases and Henry never questioned her decisions about his safety. They worked as a unit in New York and of all the things returning to Storybrooke has taken from her, she refuses to add Henry to the list.

It’s probably why she doesn’t see the book.

“You don’t want his memories back,” Mary Margaret notes as they sit side-by-side on the bed. Regina and David have disappeared downstairs, excited about the prospect of breaking the curse and learning more about Zelena.

Of course, Emma wants him to get his memories back if it will save the town. That’s her job, right? But-

“Our life in New York was really good,” she explains to her mother.

“Sure it was, but it wasn’t home,” Mary Margarets argues in her way of soft spoken words and gentleness that make you want to see her side. But Emma can’t this time. Storybrooke doesn’t feel any more like home than New York did, regardless of whether her parents are here. She thinks she could miss New York and maybe that’s the closest to home she’s gotten in years.

“It was for us,” she insists.

“That’s because you forgot about us.” Emma looks down at her lap and let’s that sink in. Maybe you just can’t miss a home you don’t remember.

“Hook failed me.” Emma doesn’t have the time to focus on the sting of Zelena’s words when she says them. She has a son to save and a curse to break and a Wicked Witch to melt. When Henry is safe and the curse is broken she corners Killian.

“Are you gonna tell me what Zelena was talking about?” She asks. “She said you’d failed her.”

“Don’t listen to her.”

“Killian what’s going on? Were you working for her?” She doesn’t want to admit how much the thought stings, that after everything his loyalties are so easily swayed. Emma doesn’t want to doubt him but it’s just what she does. If she’d done a better job of doubting Walsh, maybe she could have saved herself the heartbreak. She’s not up for another go at it.

It takes more pressure to get the whole truth and when Killian explains exactly how Zelena had cursed him - or rather part of him - she doesn’t know what to do with that information. He insists that it doesn’t matter, it’s just further proof that Emma can stop her. That doesn’t change the fact that he’d made a decision for both of them that affected not only her but Henry as well.

“I can’t trust you now. How can I?” He  _ knows  _ how she is about trust, he’d read it on her even back when they’d first met and she’d nearly shoved him off the beanstalk. He has to know how this will break the trust she was building for him.

Emma wonders if he also knows she’d been looking for a reason anyway.

Her mother goes into labor in the cemetery and there’s probably some kind of fucked up symmetry in that that Emma just does not want to contemplate. They’ve officially run out of time to delay Zelena which means it’s time for Emma to pony up. When David insists she take Hook with her to the farmhouse, she only gives in eventually because he’s right about back up being a good idea. That and, well, Killian just looks so offended when David suggests he’d draw fire.

She should have known better than to take the one person that Zelena thought cursing would help her steal her magic, should have seen it coming. Seeing Killian near lifeless, drenched and not breathing, is more than the push she needs to remind her why this town is no good for her. And cursed lips be damned like hell is she letting him die.

“Hook,” she murmurs, once she’s breathed into his lungs and felt the power leaving her, “come back to me.” She can’t force herself further away from him, can’t make herself care about the power she no longer possesses, when he  _ still isn’t breathing _ .

When Killian sputters back to the land of the living, spitting water from his lungs, she realizes she’d been holding her own breath as she waited. He breathes her name,  _ Swan _ , like a salvation as his fingers come up to touch his lips. And then he realizes and she isn’t about to justify her decision to save his life to him.

He thanks for it later in the hospital, with Zelena powerless and behind bars, and she doesn’t know how to tell him that she couldn’t have let him drown, couldn’t stand to see him like that. She knows he can’t possibly remember her begging him to come back to her, pleading for him to stay. When she reminds him that she won’t need her magic in New York and his face falls, she decides it’s probably for the best he doesn’t know how much he means to her.

She spots Henry at the vending machine and calls him over, trying to pretend she doesn’t see the look on Killian’s face at the reminder that she still plans to leave. Henry hesitates before they enter the hospital room and turns back to her with an excited grin.

“I forgot to show you,” he says and, even in his excitement he manages to keep his voice low, mindful of the baby in the next room. He unzips his hoodie suddenly and lifts the shirt underneath up. Emma doesn’t have to ask what she’s supposed to be looking for. The constellation Leo stares back at her from his ribcage as Henry’s grin lights up the hallway.

“It came back once I got my memories back!” He explains, lowering his shirt back down and zipping his hoodie back up. It takes Emma a minute to respond because she’d nearly forgotten just how much this place is a part of Henry as well. That magic is a part of him as well.

“That’s great, kid,” she smiles and it’s still only half false, despite her concerns, because Henry seems just as excited about the stars as he had when he’d first showed them to her over a year ago.

“What about yours?” He asks, glancing back quickly into the hospital room her parents and baby brother are in - checking to make sure they aren’t being missed.

“Mine?” The question catches her off guard. She’s never actually mentioned her own stars to Henry that she can remember but she’s got a smart kid, it’s not a hard leap to make. “Oh, yeah, mine came back when we got back.” Henry nods and turns to bound into the hospital room. Emma doesn’t mean to hesitate, especially doesn’t mean to glance back at Killian who’s watching her the only way he knows how - intensely - but she does. And just as quickly as she’d met his gaze, she diverts it and follows after Henry. She doesn’t need to give Killian another chance to question her decisions.

“Can I ask you something?” It just Emma and Mary Margaret in the hospital room now, with a sleeping, nameless baby across in her mother’s arms. The nurses and doctors have been calling him Baby Boy Nolan but visitors like Baby Boy Charming more. David had taken Henry out to dinner not long ago and Emma had offered to stay with Mary Margaret. She looks up at Emma’s question.

“Of course,” she nods slowly, careful not to jostle the baby in her arms.

“The soul stars,” Emma starts, looking pointedly towards the end of the bed where one of Mary Margaret’s feet is half uncovered, the end of the line of stars peeking out. “What happens to someone’s soulmate when they die?”

“Are you thinking about Neal?” Mary Margaret asks quietly and Emma shakes her head. She  _ had  _ wondered about it after Neal had passed but it felt odd to ask about it with everything else going on. Henry had reminded her when he’d brought up his own and since saving Killian - since watching him stop breathing right in front of her, powerless to do anything about it - she’d been thinking about another man she couldn’t save.

“Graham, actually,” Emma admits and realizes she’s been toying with the shoestring on her wrist without even thinking about it. “Neal, too, though. I mean, I never saw Graham’s obviously but I know Neal had them. What happens to whoever is out there that was supposed to be with them?” Mary Margaret sighs and readjusts the baby in her arms before responding.

“Emma, there’s a reason you’re so rare - a baby born from true love. True love is the deepest kind of love, the strongest magic, but not everyone finds it. Most people find someone they love deeply and that’s enough, they never need to know if it’s true or not,” she explains. “The same is true for soulmates, some people never actually meet their soulmate for whatever reason.”

Emma nods like she understands because she doesn’t really have a follow up for that. The only thing she’s learned about fate or  _ whatever  _ since she learned about true love and soulmates is that it makes absolutely no sense to her.

Killian brings up New York in front of the entire diner, meant as a quiet dig at her, but everyone in Storybrooke apparently also has magical hearing because suddenly she’s being lectured by Regina while her parents shoot her disappointed looks and  _ fucking Hook _ . He is, predictably, the one that follows her but it’s Henry who sends the book and it breaks her heart.

Maybe it’s selfish to expect Henry to just do as she says and leave but New York  _ was  _ home. It was a home where they fit without constant lurking danger. Storybrooke is just fairytales that they were never a part of anyway. She doesn’t know why she expects Killian to understand her need to find somewhere that’s home, maybe because he’s always understood everything else.

“So, you’re just gonna leave your parents, then? Don’t you even  _ care  _ about them?” He pauses and she can feel the shift, knows they’re not talking about her family anymore. “Or anyone in this town?” It’s rougher and she can see in his eyes what he’s asking. She doesn’t have the strength to deny him.

“Of course I care,” Emma whispers reverently and it’s as close to an admission as she’s ever given him. But it doesn’t change things.

What she doesn’t expect is a magic time portal that changes everything.

“How are you even here?” Emma asks as he tugs pieces of clothing from the line hung between trees. Letting Killian pick out her outfit is not something she’s entirely keen on, but he  _ does  _ know more about this place than she does.

“Did you hit your head, love?” He smirks at her over his shoulder, snagging what appears to be a dark cloak from the line and holding it out for her along with the rest of the ensemble. “I fell, just like you.” She rolls her eyes and looks around for somewhere she can change and at least relatively retain her dignity. Like hell if she’s changing in front of him.

“It seemed like you had a pretty good grip. How did you lose it?” He’s quiet for a moment, looking down at the torn cuff of his sleeve where she’d gripped it as the portal pulled her in. He looks back up, glancing around the forest rather than at her and she watches him carefully.

“That should make a sufficient cover for you to undress, I’d think,” he offers, motioning with his hand and torn cuff towards a grouping of trees and odd stumps next to where the line hangs. She appreciates the consideration but her curiosity is piqued.

“Killian,” she murmurs, taking a step towards him. He inhales deeply before finally meeting her eyes and she almost has to look away herself this time.

“You didn’t really think I wouldn’t come after you, did you, Swan?” He asks quietly and she realizes he’s right. He’s always found her before, why would now be any different?

“The trees’ll be fine,” she says instead of responding to the question because she’s pretty sure he knows the answer anyway.

Killian finds his bearings in the Enchanted Forest quickly, knowing which road will lead them to Rumplestiltskin’s castle. She wonders how many times he’d mapped the route to the castle once he’d figured out the Nightshade could kill the Dark One. She forgets, sometimes, just  _ who  _ Killian had been when she’d met him but it doesn’t stop her from wondering who he’d been before he’d met Rumplestiltskin. He’d lived whole lifetimes before their paths had crossed, no matter how much she feels like she knows Killian he’ll probably always have more secrets than she’ll have time to discover.

She had told him she was tired of living in the past, though. Maybe who he is presently is enough.

“So,” he starts after they’ve been walking down the same dirt road for a while and the forced casualness of his voice tells her it’s a conversation she probably doesn’t want to have. “You have the soul stars?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” Emma frowns because it’s not the question she was expecting. He broaches it as if it’s been minutes since Henry brought it up in the hospital rather than days. Killian shrugs, adjusts the satchel on his shoulder.

“Not everyone,” he says simply and Emma raises her eyebrows, stopping on the path for a moment. He turns when he realizes she’s not next to him and raises an eyebrow at her.

“Do you?” She asks before she can tell herself what a bad idea it is. Killian smirks but it’s missing the usual amount of cockiness, it doesn’t stop him from stepping a little more into her space though.

“Would you like to see?” He asks and it sounds more like a challenge than a come on but she refuses to rise to the bait.

“Please,” she smirks, rolling her eyes, “this is not a  _ you show me yours, I’ll show you mine  _ situation, Hook. Don’t get too excited.” She steps around him and continues down the road.

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Swan,” he responds and she can hear the grin in his voice. It takes her a minute to realize he’d never actually answered her question.

For some unfathomable reason, Emma had thought that falling through  _ a fucking time portal  _ would be the worst part of her day. Oh, how she has learned nothing from her time in Storybrooke. There’s nothing quite like the guilt that comes along with ruining your parents first meeting thereby creating a future in which neither you nor your son ever exist.

Emma’s having a one hell of a day.

She wasn’t, however, expecting Rumplestiltskin to be exactly forthcoming with his help. He hadn’t killed Killian on sight, though, so there was that at least. It had taken a little convincing but eventually she’d made him believe them and agree to help. Then all they had to do was get Snow to try and steal Charming’s engagement ring and everything would be back on track… hopefully.

Of course it was easier said than done when Snow White was turning tail and trying to find the quickest escape out of the enchanted forest as possible. Killian’s plan is less than ideal if they’re looking to not cause any more disturbances to the timeline but she likes to think she’s pretty good at distracting Hook in any time. She’d be lying if getting to tease him for being jealous of  _ himself _ , of all people, wasn’t a  bonus.

But it turns out Killian of the past isn’t any less intense than the Killian she knows and that’s, well, not  _ unexpected  _ per say. It’s just that Emma hadn’t expected to be so affected by him when he doesn’t even know her, she’s not even planning on telling him her name.

Of course, she might be a terrible person for enjoying the opportunity to kiss him without the consequences of actually kissing him. Well, she might’ve enjoyed it anyway if she weren’t so worried about  _ her  _ Killian getting off the ship before he was seen. Killian, of course, had no such qualms.

“I can’t believe you did that,” she grumbles as they sneak of the Jolly Roger - she doesn’t think she’ll ever forget  _ Rolly Joger  _ and just how surprisingly adorable a drunk Killian can be - and he huffs behind her.

“Let it go, Swan, it’ll be fine.” She knows she’s hitting a nerve but can’t find it in her to stop. Maybe she shouldn’t have had those first few drinks before finding a way to make sure Hook didn’t notice she wasn’t drinking.

“I mean, I could understand the jealousy if it were just some random asshole but it was  _ you _ .” He’s probably right, she should let this go. But who just punches  _ themselves  _ from the past? (Well, she doubts anyone else has been in the situation to do so but she thinks the point still stands.)

“I wasn’t jealous,” he bites and she stops at his tone forcing him to turn to face her. He tries to avoid her eye for a minute but he’s never been very good at that and she catches his gaze eventually.

“Hey, I’m sorry, okay? Not just for the teasing but, you know.” He sighs and nods, some of the tension leaving his shoulders.

“You did what you had to. I apologize for snapping at you, it’s not right of me to be upset.” He pauses, reaches forward and adjusts her hood for her the same way he had when she’d first put it on. “It’s hard to believe I’d manage to forget kissing you.” Emma swallows hard, tries to think of something to say in response to that.

“With as hard as he hit the floor, you’ll be lucky if you didn’t give yourself a concussion,” she deflects instead with a grin and it makes Killian smile back at her which was all she was looking for anyway.

“We should hurry and get to the castle. Make sure your mother is fairing well.” Emma nods and lets him lead the way.

Emma hates the idea of sitting on the sidelines just hoping everything goes to plan. She never thought she’d be thankful for Rumplestiltskin but when he shows up with an invitation to the ball and a concealment spell, well, it’s hard not to be at least a little grateful. It doesn’t change the fact that he’s hardly doing this out of the goodness of his heart. The corset and full skirt he puts her in make it easier to remember.

_ Princess Leia _ . Honestly, Henry would have a field day. All the names in the world and  _ that’s  _ what she goes with? She used to do this for a living but everything about this world has her ass backwards and not thinking straight. The last thing she wants to be is stuck here.

Killian leads her towards the dance floor and she decides that, if that were the case, at least the company wouldn’t be so bad.

The problem with dancing is that it usually leaves little to no personal space and it’s hard to ignore Killian when he’s got his hand at her waist as he’s leading her around the room with ease. He wasn't kidding about knowing what he was doing as he guides around the floor. She takes to it surprisingly easily, as Killian is quick to point out, and maybe it  _ is  _ in her genes. His hand lands on her back again as she holds his prosthetic and she'd be bothered by the way he won't stop smiling at her if it weren't for the fact that she can't stop returning it.

She's never felt less like she blended in and more at ease.

“There's Charming,” she points out with a short nod in his direction when she spots him. Emma reminds herself that they're here for a reason that doesn't involve her playing princess, no matter how much she's finding she enjoys dancing with Killian. She doubts she'll get another chance and she hates a little bit to end it so quickly but they have more important things to deal with.

It isn't until Regina shows up that she realizes she'd allowed herself to get pulled in again and completely lost track of David. One of these days, she'll figure out this pull Killian has over her.

The events that follow are about as far from  _ going to plan  _ as she could imagine. Actually, no, she hadn’t ever imagined herself being taken prisoner by the Evil Queen. Not  _ here _ , at least. Worse still, she still has Charming’s ring and Snow White is running off to God knows where. First, she has to worry about breaking herself and the woman in the cell next to her out of this prison and then finding Killian. She’ll deal with her parents afterwards.

Both tasks turn out to be surprisingly easy. She’d have expected Regina to have better security.

It’s actually beginning to feel like they’re in the clear until Killian spots Snow in the courtyard and Emma’s world shatters.

Killian practically has to drag her away from the window and she’s not sure how she manages to make her legs work to get her out of the castle and following the group into the woods. Someone sets up camp and starts a fire but Emma can’t see anything besides that courtyard. She can feel the warmth of the fire, the comfort of Killian’s presence next to her, but she can’t focus outside of her own head.

“After my brother passed,” Killian starts and she turns to him, manages to focus on his words because he doesn’t talk about this. She’d only learned about his brother because David had told her. “All I could do was relive that final, terrible moment. Don’t do that to yourself, love.”

She sighs and has to look away from him because she doesn’t know how not to do it to herself. She appreciates the advice but she wants him to just  _ understand _ . He says something about living in the here and now and she realizes.

“I’m still here.”

Apparently, she should have paid closer attention when Henry was retelling the story. It’s Charming who realizes that the bug on her arm is actually Snow White and him who saves her from being squashed. After that, everything seems back on track. They’d sorted the situation with the woman who should be dead. (“I always knew there was a little pirate in you, Swan,” Killian had laughed and she hadn’t been able to stop herself from preening at the compliment when, really, they should not have been delighting in their kidnapping.) Snow and Charming managed the troll bridge all on their own and the book had gone back to normal.

“It’s okay, Swan,” he’d whispered as she’d tried to hide her tears. “Not everyone gets the chance to watch their parents fall in love.”

She should have known from the beginning that trusting Rumpelstiltskin would be their downfall. He drops them in a vault to forget about them with a wand that doesn’t work and Emma hasn’t felt this powerless since Neverland. Leave it to Killian to goad her into an impassioned speech that brings her magic back completely on accident and then  _ gloat  _ about it.

Emma doesn’t know where the thought comes from but she’s really glad she didn’t push him off that beanstalk.

The first thing she wants to do when she gets back home is see her family - even if that means leaving Killian to deal with the woman she’d saved. He doesn’t seem to particularly mind, though, as she runs out of the barn. Emma doesn’t realize until she’s explaining the story to her parents and Henry that her and Killian have made its pages.  _ A fairytale princess, at last, _ Mary Margaret teases and Emma can’t find it in herself to even pretend to be all the bothered.

Emma spots Killian outside, away from the festivities of the night and decides to join him. When she thanks him for New York, she realizes there are still questions she doesn’t have answers to. When he explains how he’d found her, any follow up questions disappear in favor of just one.

“You traded your ship for me?” She asks because the whole thought seems absurd, that he would trade his most prized possession just to come back and save her. The past few days have taken everything she thought she knew about Killian and flipped it on its head. When he simply responds “aye” like it’s that simple, she realizes this was something about Killian she’d actually known all along.

This time, when she kisses him, she has no intention of not meaning it.

She’s  _ in the book _ , now, and Emma doesn’t really know how to deal with that. She’s happy about it, Henry’s predictably ecstatic despite her pseudonym, but what’s more is she doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that she’s in the book with Killian. She’s spent more than a few free moments alone - a thing she’s finding she does not get a lot of sharing the loft with her son, parents, and baby brother - with the book open to the page with her and Killian dancing. They look like themselves mostly and, it’s ridiculous because it’s a  _ drawing _ but, Emma can’t help but think she looks incredibly  _ happy _ .

“Princess Leia,” David chuckles as he drops onto the couch next to her and Emma jumps. She hadn’t even heard him come in she’d been so absorbed in the pages. “I’ve been thinking about it more, remembering details, and I remember what you said when we rescued you. The only one who saves you is you.” Emma grins at him and shrugs because, well, was she wrong?

“I appreciated the backup,” she comments and it earns her a full out laugh from her father. She flips the pages forward to the place where it tells, in excruciatingly vague detail, of David and Prince Charles sitting by the fire waiting on Red. There’s no drawing to accompany it but David skims the pages and frowns down at them.

“Prince Charles was so..,” he scrambles for a descriptor but gives up and finishes with, “not Hook.” Emma nods because she understands how David sees Killian compared to her, all pirate virtues and male posturing. The latter being something she’s seen her father counter with his own more than once. She doesn’t know what to tell him because Charles was the Killian she gets to see regularly - all soft words and comforting gestures laced in innuendo and unfailing belief in her. Sometimes she still has trouble rectifying him with the man she’d met back in the Enchanted Forest with so much hate and anger in him, vengeance the only thing keeping him alive. She’s not sure when exactly that changed.

“What did you two talk about after Snow ran off to get Red?” She asks instead of trying to explain the many layers of Killian Jones to her father. She still doesn’t even know most of them. David raises an eyebrow and she suddenly wishes she hadn’t spoken at all because he’s studying her now.

“That’s private,” he says finally and Emma rolls her eyes.

“Oh, please,” she scoffs, “what could you have talked about that was  _ private _ ?”

“You,” he says easily and that bugs her more. The idea of them talking about her in private and David thinking she didn’t need to know what it was. He continues before she can fight him on it. “I’m not keeping it from you. I just think that if you really want to know, maybe it’s something you should talk to Hook about.” Emma frowns.

“Are you actually encouraging a relationship between me and Hook?” She asks skeptically and David’s brow furrows like what he’s about to say is actually paining him.

“I’m not  _ encouraging  _ anything. If you wish to pursue a relationship with him, though, that’s your choice.” That’s a diplomatic way of putting it, even for David. Emma eyes him for a moment and he meets her stare easily, discomfort still at the edge of it but he seems genuine and now she  _ really  _ wants to know what the hell Charles had said to her father that won Killian his  _ approval _ .

Baby Neal starts crying from across the room and David pushes himself off the couch, gently patting her shoulder before heading over to the crib they’d put together. Emma stares down at the pages for a few more minutes before she closes the book.

It had turned out that the woman they’d brought back with them from the Enchanted Forest, the one doomed to die at Regina’s hand, had been Robin’s departed wife. Needless to say, Regina was in a state.

Emma, admittedly, felt a little guilty. She’d found a home and brought herself and Killian back to it and now she and him were, well, whatever they were becoming and Regina had lost Robin. That didn’t mean Regina got to take it out on her though. She wasn’t sure who she’d been avoiding more since the night of the royal name announcement - Regina or Killian.

He corners her at the station as she’s heading out for a call and for a moment he gets close enough that Emma thinks he’s going to kiss her which, well, it wouldn’t be unwelcome to say the least. But she can see the hurt in his eyes before he even asks.

“Swan, are you avoiding me?” Emma blanches for a moment because she doesn’t want to lie but a  _ yes  _ to that question isn’t going to help matters.

“No, I’m not avoiding you I’ve just been busy.” He raises his eyebrows as he looks around the empty station. Emma lamely lifts the hand holding her phone in it. “I have a call to get to.”

“This is Storybrooke, unless it’s a new villain how hasty can that call be?”

“How do you know it’s  _ not  _ a new villain? Or an old one? Regina’s been in a state,” she points out.

“Because if it were, one of the dwarves would be yelling it down the streets,” he counters and, well, he’s not wrong. Leroy has one hell of a voice on him. “Is that what this is about, then? Regina?” She sighs and looks away from him.

“I just feel guilty. She lost someone she really cares about because of me.”

“You saved that woman’s life. From Regina,” he points out but studies her when she doesn’t respond. “There’s more to it than just Regina’s feelings, isn’t there?” Emma hesitates, looks back down at her phone as another forwarded call comes in and that’s a little weird.

“Can you be patient with me?” She asks, looking back up at Killian and ignoring the call for a moment.

“I’ve all the time in the world,” he assures her and she can tell he’s still upset but doesn’t have time to deal with it. She answers the call as she heads past him towards the door but stops, removing the phone from her ear for a moment.

“I am down a Sheriff,” she offers and she hopes it’s the olive branch she’d like it to be. At least, she hopes it’s enough for now. “You wanna help me out?” His face lights up just enough that Emma can tell he realizes what she’s trying to offer and he follows her out the door and to the cruiser.

What they learn is not to piss off the Merry Men. Apparently, the new curse had brought an ex-ally of Robin Hood’s over, Will Scarlet, and Will Scarlet had found himself on the business end of Little John’s crossbow in the middle of Main Street. Understandably, concerned citizens were blowing up the emergency lines while Granny tried to talk the two men down.

It was an interesting sight, to say the least.

Emma gets Granny out of the crossfire because she knows the woman is just stubborn enough to take an arrow to the chest to prove a point and focuses her attentions on Little John who she figures she has a better chance of calming down.

“He was rifling through our camp,” John accuses and Emma can’t help the surprise on her face.

“And you chased him all the way here?  _ With a crossbow _ ?”

“Let nothing be said for the man’s persistence,” she hears Killian comment somewhere behind her and she figures he’s keeping an eye on Scarlet. She chances a glance for a moment and he seems to be sizing Killian up, deciding if he can take him and make a break for it she’s sure. Emma doubts he’d manage to outrun Little John’s crossbow, though, that is assuming he’d actually use it. She really hopes it’s just a scare tactic.

“Just looking for my chance to join up with the Merry Men again, ain’t I?” Scarlett asks and Emma doesn’t miss the thick accent or the thicker layer of sarcasm laced through the words. Unfortunately, neither does Little John, who’d mostly lowered the crossbow  at Emma’s presence. He levels it again towards Will, though, this time she’s mostly in between them.

Emma doesn’t like having weapons pointed at her.

She puts her hands up in front of her and eases herself towards Little John.

“Hey, calm down, okay?” She tries. “I only have two cells down at the station, don’t make me fill them both today.”

“You won’t have to if he’s in the hospital,” he threatens and Emma glances back just in time to see Will mime shaking with fear. She rolls her eyes.

“Do you  _ want  _ an arrow in your leg?” She shouts and, judging by way John is aiming, the arrow definitely wouldn’t be meant to kill. Just severely injure. Will doesn’t respond as he seems to be sizing Killian up again before coming to a decision. With that, he turns and runs. Killian shouts after him and gives chase and before Emma can even process the scene, Little John is shooting what she hopes is a warning arrow at Will.

Except Will is long gone and there’s only one person in range.

“No,” Emma shouts and her body acts on instinct. Her hands come up and Killian is blown forward right before the arrow embeds itself in the fence in front of Granny’s. Killian barely reacts, shooting her a quick grateful look before taking off after Will again. Emma considers trying to stop him but turns back towards John who seems at least a little chagrined and sighs.

“I really hate paperwork,” she complains as she snatches the crossbow from his hand and motions him towards the police cruiser.

She’s got Little John in a cell and is halfway through her incident report when Killian comes back through the station door. He looks a little wind blown but no worse for wear. Scarlet is no where in sight.

“He disappeared into the woods, I’m afraid, love,” he explains when she looks up, dropping her pen down on top of the papers.

“I doubt it’s the last we’ve seen of him,” she comments and she can’t help being a little angry with Killian. “You can’t just go running off without backup, though, okay? You’re not  _ actually  _ a cop.”

“My apologies, Swan,” he says carefully, reading her tone. “I thought you’d want to apprehend the thief.”

“Yeah, I do,” she snaps, “and we will. David and I.” Killian drops back on his heels like he’s just made sense of something and she doesn’t know what exactly he thinks he’s figured out but she’s not in the mood for it.

“Swan,” he starts but doesn’t get the moment to finish as Robin comes through the station looking for Little John. Emma stands and moves past Killian to explain the situation to Robin.

“Can you release him?” Robin asks and Emma hesitates.

“He fired a crossbow in the middle of Main Street,” she emphasises. “He almost hit someone.”

“I assure you it was just a misunderstanding,” Robin insists and, really, Emma shouldn’t let him go but she wants to finish the paperwork and get home before Henry goes to bed, not stand here arguing with Robin Hood. Emma has a feeling she’s gonna be standing here arguing with Killian anyway.

“Fine,” she sighs, “but I’m keeping the crossbow for now.”

Robin nods and thanks her as she unlocks the cell door.

“Swan,” Killian says quietly from behind her once it’s just the two of them. His hook circles her wrist and he turns her to face him so gently she can’t help but give in. Once he’s sure he’s got her attention, he continues, “do you still not trust me?” She blanches.

“Of course, I trust you!”

“Then why do you keep pulling away from me?” He asks and his voice is colored with anger and frustration and something like desperation. The words are out of her mouth before she can think about them, before she can conceal the real fear in them.

“Because everyone I’ve ever been with is dead!” She sees the fight go out of him at the words but she can’t stop herself now that she’s started. “Neal, Graham. Even Walsh. I lost everyone. I can’t lose you, too.”

She can remember vividly his lifeless form laid out in front of her when Zelena had tried to drown him. Zelena’s intent had never been to kill, she knew Emma wouldn’t let him die and had been counting on it. But for a few seconds she doubted he would come back, the few moments between her breathing into his lungs and him coming back to her - she’d be so sure she’d lost him before she’d ever even had him.

“Well, love,” he says and there’s a soft smile on his face, like she hadn’t just told him loving her is a death sentence, “you don’t have to worry about me. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s surviving.”

There’s a promise in his eyes that feels like tempting fate but he steps into her space and kisses her, initiating for the first time since New York, and she manages to believe him.

It isn’t until she drags her hand up his arm and feels the tear in the leather that she pulls back. He doesn’t let her go far, hand still cradled in her hair, and she doesn’t really try to pull far.

“The arrow got you,” she murmurs, fingering the tear in the leather.

“Just the leather, love,” he says before trying to duck back in for another kiss. She pulls further away this time, lifting her red smeared fingers and raising an eyebrow at him. He smirks at her. “A flesh wound.”

She rolls her eyes at him and pulls away, heading into the office to dig out the first aid kit. When she comes back out, he’s watching her and she points to the couch near the cells.

“Sit.” He smirks and follows her direction.

“Demanding,” he comments and she can’t help the way she responds with a smirk of her own. “I like it.” He drops down less than gently onto the seat and she follows him, tugging at the collar of his coat lightly before opening the first aid kit.

“Off with that,” she directs and, if possible, his smirk only gets bigger. He gets his injured arm out of it for her inspection but leaves it halfway on.

“No need to stand on ceremony, Swan,” he all but breathes against her ear, “if you wanted to undress me all you had to do was ask.” She gives him a bored look but can’t ignore the way her heartbeat picks up. She’s sure her cheeks are turning pink but she refuses to give into him.

“Trust me, Killian,” she responds in kind, reaching forward and tearing his sleeve the rest of the way to reach where the arrow had caught his skin, “if I wanted to get you naked, I have  _ much  _ more interesting ways.”

Emma watches him swallow hard, his eyes focused on hers and she can’t stop the self-satisfied grin that spreads across her face. Two can play at this game.

She breaks contact to pull the antiseptic and a roll of bandages from the kit. He gets a whiff of the antiseptic and scrunches his face up at it. It reminds her so much of Henry she has to laugh.

“What is that?” Killian asks like he’s a child being exposed to cauliflower for the first time.

“It’s antiseptic,” she tells him, pouring some onto a gauze pad from the kit and pressing it against the cut. He hisses at the pain and she smirks. “Works better than the rum.”

He smiles again, but it’s softer this time; it’s like he’s remembering the same thing she is.

“It appears our roles have reversed,” he comments quietly.

She hums in response as she wraps the bandage around his arm, tucking it underneath to keep it secure.

“Yeah, you wanna go knock Anton out for fun?” She deadpans and he laughs before looking down at her handiwork. He frowns.

“It seems you’ve ruined my shirt, Swan.”

“Must be time to get a new one.”

The next time Emma sees him the leather pants haven’t changed, but he’s wearing a black button up and a leather jacket. The only thing that somehow keeps her from jumping him right there in the station is David’s presence. David in the office, so he misses her whole freeze and double take thing. Killian doesn’t let it go unnoticed, of course.

Killian starts helping them around the town, acting as an unofficial deputy when David has to be at home or needs to sleep. Emma is amazed  _ she  _ manages to get any sleep with Baby Neal in the same apartment and she tries to help her parents out whenever she can. That doesn’t stop her from using her Sheriff duties as an excuse to escape every once in a while. When David can’t get away or she can tell he’s just too tired to be of any real help, she calls Killian - who she has begun insisting carry a cellphone which he, of course, absolutely hates.

Apparently, being fairytale characters with their memories properly intact does not stop the people in Storybrooke from acting like drunken idiots when the moment arises. Emma calls Killian when she gets a late night call about a fight at the Rabbit Hole and he jumps at the chance to accompany her.

“Sorry about the late call,” she says in lieu of a greeting when she pulls up at the Rabbit Hole to find him already waiting outside, leaning against the wall.

“Not to worry, love,” he assures her, “I’d never say no to a date with you.”

“Oh, is that what this is?” She laughs and Killian shrugs.

“Well, if I only counted quiet dinners, we wouldn’t even get one date,” he explains. “So, I’ll take what I can get.”

She shakes her head but grins at him.

“You want some real romance,” she teases, “watch me break up this barfight.”

He raises his eyebrows and licks his bottom lip in a way that is absolutely obscene.

Emma pushes through the doors to the Rabbit Hole with him following behind her. It should probably surprise her to find Tinkerbell in the middle of a knockdown bar fight with two men twice her size but, well, this is Storybrooke. She intervenes while Killian tries to talk Tink down, something she really should never have entrusted to Killian in the first place.

Before she has time to react, Killian’s taken one of Tinkerbell’s elbows to the stomach as she launched back into the fight and one of the other men, missing their intended target, knocks Killian into a table and then onto the floor.

It takes Emma another five minutes to break it all up. She refuses to call David for backup for something this  _ normal _ . There isn’t really enough room in the cruiser or the cells for the three offenders but, dammit, Emma is tired of playing nice.

“You good?” She asks as she helps Killian up once she’s got the situation mostly under control. He groans but nods. Tinkerbell snickers from somewhere behind her and earns a dark look from Killian that does nothing to suppress her giggling. It takes some clever maneuvering but she manages to make everyone fit in the cruiser. Killian is favoring his ribs, keeping his arm tucked closely against them. It makes Emma nervous but she has to deal with the three drunken idiots first.

“Well, if you were fighting for a night in the drunk tank, I’ve got good news,” she says as she ushers the three into the station. “Everyone’s a winner.”

“I’m not drunk,” Tink complains as Emma locks her into a separate cell from the two men whose ire had clearly been directed at Tinkerbell and not each other.

“So you pick fights with men twice your size in bars for fun?” She asks as she hears Killian shuffling around behind her in a way that definitely sounds worrisome.

“She’s a damn  _ hustler _ !” One of the men snaps and Emma raises an eyebrow at him.

“If you’re dumb enough to get taken, you can’t blame the taker,” she tells him before turning to attend to Killian. “Hey, are you alright?”

He waves her off, “I’ve had worse, Swan. Don’t worry about me.” He punctuates the sentence with a sharp inhale and she shakes her head.

“No, you are definitely going to the hospital,” she insists, trading the cruiser keys for the keys to her bug as Killian groans.

“Not that bloody place.”

“Yeah, go ahead, keep complaining all the way to the car.” Emma presses her hand against his back to urge him along and he moves without protest even as he continues grumbling.

When they get to the hospital, Whale sends Killian in for an x-ray of his ribs while Emma waits. The hospital is blissfully quiet, a few sniffling patients who probably have some type of flu and some minor accidental injuries come through while she’s waiting but nothing particularly concerning. When they move Killian into a room, Emma joins him as they wait for Whale. They’ve wrapped his torso up tightly, she supposes just in case.

She’s trying not to stare at him, shirt and jacket discarded on a chair in the corner, but the act of trying not to is almost making her do it more. Killian’s fit, obviously, that had never been a secret even under layers. She’d felt it before. But what keeps drawing her eye is the multitude of scars over his chest, she’s scanning them as he leans back against the wall where the examination table is pushed against it. It suddenly strikes her how much of his past she still doesn’t know about.

Whale comes in looking annoyed already, but Emma is pretty sure that’s a constant state for him. He clips the x-rays up on the lightboard and switches it on. He turns to Killian with a deadpan stare, but doesn’t say anything. Killian looks between her and the doctor.

“Am I supposed to know what that means, mate?” He asks finally and Whale rolls his eyes, pointing at the x-rays.

“ _ That _ , Captain, is where you fractured your ribs last time and never gave them the chance to heal properly,” he explains and Killian shifts uncomfortably, lifting his hand to scratch behind his ear. “The improper fusing made it easier to bruise one of them this time.”

“At least, it wasn’t all of them,” Killian tries, injecting some levity into his voice.

“Hook,” Emma hisses while Whale snatches the x-rays back down and turns the light off.

“Just take the bandage off when you get home and try to rest,” Whale sighs. “You’re lucky it isn’t too bad and most of the pain should lessen in a few days. Until then, I can prescribe you something.” Emma nods and thanks him as he heads out of the room and Killian stands up to put his shirt back on. He stretches his arm to push it through the arm and that’s when Emma notices it, mostly hidden underneath the bandage and camouflaged by old scars and chest hair. A star peeking out, just one, but the tail leads underneath the bandage continuing in a pattern she can’t see on his ribcage.

She sucks in a breath when she sees it and Killian looks up at the sound, misreading her panic as concern.

“You heard him, Swan, it could have been worse. I’ll be fine in a few days. I’m a quick healer,” he reassures her and she nods, pulling her eyes from the single star as he buttons his shirt with one hand. She steps forward and bats his hand away to help him, trying to keep herself calm. The pattern could be anything and she doesn’t want to know,  _ really  _ she doesn’t. Except she can’t stop imagining and she doesn’t know what would be worse - that it isn’t the same as hers or that it is.

His eyes follow her fingers as she quickly buttons his shirt and then he leans down to kiss her gently when she finishes.

“Are you alright, love?” He asks quietly when he pulls away and she nods a bit too quickly, stepping back from him.

“Yeah, I should get back to the station, though,” she says, “I have to write an incident report. Are you okay to get home?”

He nods but she can feel his eyes on her as she slips out of the hospital room. Emma knows he can tell something is going on.

She does go back to the station and locks herself in the office. One of the two men is already asleep in the cot while the other one sulks against the wall. Tinkerbell watches Emma carefully when she comes back in and Emma decides a conversation with the fairy about fate or soulmates or  _ whatever  _ is not something she’s interested in.

It takes her hours to finish the report that should take her about twenty minutes but her mind is scrambled. She hadn’t exactly forgotten about the stars, but it wasn’t like everyone in town went around showing theirs off. Emma had learned they were mostly a personal thing and she definitely had no intention of broadcasting her own in the middle of Granny’s. And of course she’d thought about Killian’s, the way he’d dodged talking about his own when he’d tried to ask about hers back in the Enchanted Forest.

But things were  _ good _ between them. The last thing Emma needed was something as ridiculous as fate coming in and making her second guess everything.

She decides she needs to know, she just needs to be sure even if she’s not quite sure of what. But first she needs to sleep.

In the morning, Emma asks David to let the three brawlers out of their cells and heads over to Granny’s first thing. She plans on just storming in his room and asking him, point blank. Except she won’t know how to respond either way it goes and, well, she quickly loses her resolve upon actually arriving at Granny’s. She decides to stop and order a hot chocolate while she thinks of a new plan. But by the time she makes it to Killian’s door, she still has no idea what she’s actually planning on saying to him.  _ Hey, so, yesterday I noticed you have stars on your chest and, well, just checking here - are you my soulmate? _

Yeah, she sees that going over really well.

On the one hand, she could be completely off base and they aren’t soulmates which would just up the pressure on how long until he leaves her and inevitably she’d run away. Or they  _ are  _ soulmates and, well, that thought kind of makes her feel like she’s suffocating.

This was a terrible idea.

Emma turns on her foot, fully intending on running away and forgetting about the stars all together because, really,  _ what  _ was she thinking? She’s made a full 180 when the door opens behind her and she stops breathing.

“Swan?” He calls out and she freezes still poised to run away. “I thought I heard someone lurking.”

“I wasn’t lurking,” she counters, spinning to face him and, well, all his shirtless glory.  _ God _ , this was a bad idea. She forces her eyes on only his face, refusing the urge to search the bared skin for what she’d come here for in the first place. He smirks at her and turns to the side to invite her inside. She ducks past him.

“I was about to get dressed and come down to the station,” he explains and she notices his hook sitting on the night table on the left side of the bed. When she turns back he’s got his shirt on, half buttoned up and she realizes she’s a total fucking  _ coward _ . “Is something wrong?”

“No.” She shakes her head, pulling her attention back to his face. He’s studying her carefully and she knows if she isn’t incredibly careful, he’ll see straight through her. “No, of course not. I just came by to tell you that I wasn’t gonna be at the station today. My parents asked me to watch Neal today for them.”

“You came over here to tell me you had to stay at home today? Not that I’m complaining about the visit, but couldn’t you have just called?” He asks, his tone calling bullshit. She holds her cup of hot chocolate out at him before setting it down on the table next to the door.

“I wanted to get a hot chocolate anyway.”

Killian nods.

“Want some company with the little lad?” He offers and she smiles at the gesture but shakes her head.

“No, it’s alright. Just because I’m stuck playing babysitter doesn’t mean you should be.” Not to mention it’s a total fucking lie. Except now she’ll have to leave David to the normal Sheriff duties himself while she spends the day with Mary Margaret, keeping up appearances.

See, this is why she hates lying.

“Are you sure, love?” He asks, stepping up to her and wrapping his arms around her waist. She ducks her head as her fingers come up to toy with the collar of his shirt. “It could be fun.”

He says fun like they’re talking about something other than babysitting. The next thing she knows she’s tugging him by his collar, kissing him hard. His hand comes up to thread in her hair and she can feel the leather of the brace on his left arm pressing against her back. One of her hands presses the back of his neck, pulling him closer.

And Emma does what she always manages to do when she’s kissing Killian. She forgets.

In Neverland, she’d forgotten momentarily why it was neither the time nor place for stupid challenges and the kisses in response to them. After the Enchanted Forest, she’d forgotten why it was a bad idea to let him in - even if he had already managed to sneak past her walls before she’d even realized he was trying to. Now, she forgets all about stars and soulmates and fate and just concentrates on Killian.

She’s pretty sure she’s the one who backs them towards the bed, who pushes Killian down to sit on it, because she’s hovering over him and he’s staring up at her like her entire being is made of stars. She tucks her hair behind her ears and leans down to kiss him again, softer this time. And then she’s straddling him, undoing the buttons on his shirt he’d only just done up as he kisses her jaw.

Emma doesn’t remember until it’s staring her in the face and her whole body tenses.

“Love, what’s wrong?” Killian breathes, panting a little from their activities and pulling away from her. Emma forces her eyes up to his own, knows he’ll be able to read the panic she’s having trouble concealing there.

“Nothing,” she forces out, standing up from him and backing away. Hurt flashes across his face but she can’t stay and deal with it. She can’t deal with him, she has to get away. “I just- I should be getting home. Mary Margaret is waiting on me and you should be resting. Doctor’s orders.”

She’s out the door, hot chocolate forgotten, before he even has a chance to respond.

“Okay, out with it,” Mary Margaret says, setting a mug of a steaming liquid in front of Emma and dropping down in the chair opposite. Emma looks from the mug to her mother with raised eyebrows.

“Out with what?” She asks slowly and Mary Margaret sighs and rolls her eyes. Emma had never imagined Snow White having this much of a ‘tude when she was younger.

“Whatever it is that has you hiding out here in the middle of the afternoon.” Emma tries to look affronted at the accusation.

“Can’t I just want to spend the day here?” She asks, wrapping her hands around the mug and pulling it towards her.

“Emma, honey, I love you but the four of us have been living in close quarters with a newborn for months. You’ve been using work as an escape.” Emma goes to protest but her mother holds a hand up to stop her. “Hey, it’s fine. I understand. But it does bring the question of what’s happened that has you holing up here instead of out there doing something.”

Emma sighs and sinks down in her chair. Normally, Mary Margaret would be exactly who she’d want to talk about this but she just wasn’t sure what to say. Everything with her and Killian had been so simple so far. She isn’t prepared to give that up.

“Fate,” Emma sighs quietly to herself as a response to Mary Margaret’s question. Her mother frowns in confusion and Emma presses on. “If you care for someone and they aren’t your soulmate, does that make it any less real?”

“No,” her mother responds immediately. “No, of course not. If you care about someone that’s real, no matter what fate says.” Emma nods, studying the mug in front of her. She lets out a self depreciating laugh at her next question.

“And if you care about someone and they are your soulmate, how do you know it’s not  _ just  _ fate? How do you know you have any stake in your feelings at all?” Mary Margaret stumbles at this and Emma hides her face as she takes a drink from the tea.

“I think,” Mary Margaret starts, “that whatever you feel is  _ real _ , regardless. If you love someone, you can’t second guess your feelings just because of fate.” Emma bristles at the word love but Neal starts crying from the other end of the loft and her mother gives her a soft smile and a pat on the back of her hand before she stands up to attend to him.

Less than an hour later, Henry comes bounding through the door, a ball of energy her kid.

“Mom!” He grins when he spots her in the kitchen. “You’re home early. Is everything okay?”

“Why does everyone immediately assume something is wrong around here?” She asks, earning matching looks from her son and her mother. “Okay, fair. No, everything’s fine. I just wasn’t feeling great this morning.”

“Are you feeling better now? Because maybe a grilled cheese for dinner would make you feel better,” Henry suggest and Emma laughs.

“Is that your way of saying you want to go to Granny’s for dinner?” Henry smiles sheepishly but nods. “Sure, kid. Mary Margaret, dinner at Granny’s? We can call David on the way.” Mary Margaret agrees, deciding Neal could use some fresh air anyway. She calls David from the bug and he agrees to meet them.

The usual crowd greets them at Granny’s but Emma spots Killian in the back throwing darts.

“You guys get a table,” she tells Mary Margaret and Henry, “I’ll be right back.”

They nod, spotting a booth towards the front as she crosses the diner to stand behind Killian.

“Hey,” she greets quietly. Killian tosses a dart at the board, dead center. She reminds herself never to play with him for keeps.

“Swan,” he greets, only turning to face her after he’s retrieved the dart. “Here I thought you’d be avoiding me.”

“Why would I do that?” She asks but he gives her a look that tells her enough. It’s not hard to figure out why the woman you’re sort of seeing ran off after seeing the place where your soul stars are for the first time. She sighs. “I’m not avoiding you. I actually came over here to see if you wanted to get a drink later. I want to talk.”

He seems skeptical, but nods.

“In my experience, no good ever comes from those words,” he comments, turning and lining up another shot. “But I’ll trust you.”

Emma knows it’s not supposed to be some meaningful comment because he punctuates by throwing another dart, but she had ran out on him that morning and he was still choosing to trust her. That had to mean something.

He disappears at some point during dinner and after they’ve finished, Emma sends her family home ahead of her. Mary Margaret gives her an encouraging look and it’s enough to get Emma up the stairs to stand in front of Killian’s room again. This time, she does turn around and head back downstairs only to return with a bottle of rum and two glasses. She knocks on Killian’s door with the toe of her boot.

“Swan,” he greets with a smile when he opens the door, “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me.”

She smirks and moves past him into the room.

“Not to further your already enormous ego, but you’d be a hard man to forget, Killian.”

The smile only grows and she can’t help but think this is off to a good start. Which is good, because she has no idea where to actually start with this conversation besides the alcohol. She twists the lid off the bottle and pours them each a generous amount, handing a glass to Killian. He takes a healthy drink of his while she swallows her whole.

“What did you wish to talk about?” He asks after the silence has become too heavy and Emma refills her glass.

“Milah,” she says finally and can feel Killian staring at her as she focuses all of her attention on twisting the cap back on the glass bottle.

“Milah?” He asks slowly, like she might have misspoke. Emma steels herself and forces her gaze to his.

“Yes, Milah,” she says resolutely. “You’ve never really told me much about her. What was she like?” He studies her for a moment before his eyes drift to his glass.

“She was a lot like you, actually.” Emma raises her eyebrows because that sounds like something you just tell someone, not something that’s actually true.

“Me?”

“Aye, you,” he smiles a little at the disbelief in her voice. “She was a force to be reckoned with, Milah. She was a mother who was just looking for a home.” Emma frowns because it sounds familiar but she also remembers the bits of things Neal had told her.

“I could never leave Henry behind for that, though,” she points out and Killian turns towards her on the bed.

“You have to understand, it wasn’t that simple. She thought she was giving Baelfire his best chance, she had no idea what his father would turn into,” he explains and Emma nods because she’s not trying to judge, she just wants to understand. She wants to reconcile the woman Killian had loved with woman who had left Neal.

She finishes half of her glass and Killian pours himself another before she gets to her next question.

“Did she have stars?” She’d just assumed everyone did but the way Killian had answered her in the Enchanted Forest made her doubt that and if it wasn’t himself he was talking about, well, Milah seemed like the obvious jump to make.

“No,” he responds, chuckling down at his glass. “Milah always thought it was a gift not to have them. She never wanted to consider herself at the whims of fate. Perhaps that was fate’s cruel joke, that she didn’t have one.” Emma frowns, his voice has taken on a dark quality she hasn’t heard in a while and she wants to fix it. She reaches a hand over and places it gently on his wrist. She inches her fingers up the sleeve of his jacket, stroking gently at the spot where she knows his tattoo lies. He shudders at the contact.

“Do you believe that?” She asks. “That we’re all just... bending to the universe?” He looks over at her with a contemplative frown and Emma squirms a little under his gaze. She looks down at her glass instead of him, lifting it to take a long swallow.

“Emma.” Her name pulls her attention back to him. “I know how I feel, fate be damned. I don’t care if we were written in the stars or something equally ridiculous, I care about how I feel about you right now. I care how you feel.”

Emma swallows as she stares at him before moving forward to kiss him softly. He responds in kind but it’s only a moment before she pulls away, pressing her forehead against his. Her fingers trace his jaw as she pulls away, nodding once to herself as she fortifies her decision.

“What are you doing?” Killian asks quietly as she pulls away from him, setting the glass down on the nightstand next to the bottle and standing up. She turns away from him towards the closed door and squeezes her eyes shut. She sheds her coat and pulls her sweater over her head, dropping them both on the floor. Killian calls her name out quietly as a question and she takes another deep breath before lifting her tank top up just enough to uncover her ribs.

When she turns, she sees Killian drink her in, sees the moment when his eyes land on the cluster of stars and he freezes. She takes a shaky breath as he stands from the bed to cross over to her, just far enough away that he can still see the constellation.

“You told me once that when you won my heart,” she starts quietly and Killian’s eyes break from the mark on her skin to meet hers, “it would be because I wanted you.”

“Aye, that I did.”

She shakes her head to herself as she continues, “I don’t know about fate or soulmates or these.” She reaches forward, her hand falling over the spot on his right side where she knows his stars are, traces them over his clothes from the memory of tracing her own. “I just know that I’m here because I  _ want to be with you. _ ”

Killian doesn’t bother saying anything else. He presses forward suddenly, kissing her fiercely and Emma responds without complaint. His hand comes up to her hair, the cool metal of his hook resting at her back, and Emma shudders suddenly.

“Killian,” she murmurs against his mouth. He hums in response, captures her lips again before she pulls away again. “Take off your clothes.” He doesn’t even have time to smirk at her before he’s twisting his hook out of the brace and she’s shoving his leather jacket off his shoulders.

“You’ll be the death of me, Swan,” he groans when she rolls her hips against his while he gets the jacket off.

“But what a fun way to go,” she grins and he laughs, spinning them around and leading her backwards towards the bed.

Later, when she’s sprawled across him thinking about how for the first time in a while she doesn’t feel like she should be cutting and running after sex, even though she definitely has a kid to put to bed and parents to explain herself to, she realizes.

“I should have known,” she scoffs as he laces their fingers together.

“What’s that, love?” He asks, leaning up to brush a kiss across her cheek and pulling a smile from her.

“The gemini twins,” she tells him, “they’re the patrons of sailors.”

**Author's Note:**

> comments fuel my lifeblood!


End file.
